


darkness arrives (and departs)

by sunastreo



Category: The Walking Dead (Telltale Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Descriptions of gore, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Melancholy, clementine-centric, survivor's guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-10 19:59:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18667366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunastreo/pseuds/sunastreo
Summary: The fight for their home was over, but the fight inside her head was forever.(Clementine thinks about Lee and wonders why home doesn't quite feel like home yet.)





	darkness arrives (and departs)

**Author's Note:**

> u bet ur beautiful ass the fic title is a bad suns song of the same title !!!! their newest album is Rad
> 
> anws, this lil fic came to mind when i realized how much shit clem shoulders and ppl (in the game) forget how really young she is, so i guess once she stops finding a purpose to fight and search for a home, the past would eventually catch up to her. i wrote this legit in a day and i'm dying so i apologize for any tiny blips and grammar mistakes !!!! ;v;

Clementine stares up at the timber ceiling of the bed frame above her. Angled rays of the morning skylight spills past the windows, bright and monotonous, yet not quite diffusing among the blurry-faced ghosts walking among the room. 

She knows what ghosts are. They’re malicious apparitions that seek to harm, to possess and haunt the forsaken, but the ghosts that face the direction of the sunset and linger in the corners of her eyes are nothing like the ghosts Clementine remembers hearing about and seeing as a child. They were the vestiges of the souls she’s left behind upon this blood-drugged earth - the ones she left behind to die, to be eaten, to suffer; the ghosts of dead friends, betrayal, and the phantom of a lost limb. 

Clementine sucks in a deep breath, holds it, and exhales shakily. People fade, but the memories always stay.

She sits up when she hears the door creak open. AJ pops his head in, his eager eyes lighting up at the sight of Clementine already awake. “Finally! You’re such a sleeper inner, Clem. D’ya want something to drink first?”

“Hey, AJ,” Clementine smiles, wincing as she reaches for her crutches that were leaning against the table. “I’m fine. Maybe later?”

There must have been something strange about the face she made because AJ purses his lips, his expression becoming ponderous. He chances a glance over his shoulder before he steps in and closes the door behind him. “Did you have another nightmare again?”

Clementine pulls her lips into a tight line and glances out the windows that were streaked with grime and dirt. “No. Don’t worry about it, okay?” She looks back at him with a reassuring smile and he seems to relax, though wariness is still present in his eyes. “What’s your task for today, champ?” 

“I’m collecting wood for the fire with Omar today,” AJ says. “Do you want me to help you down the school, Clem?”

“No, no. I’ve got it. You should go. Omar doesn’t like tardiness.”

“Tar - what?”

“ _Tardiness._ It means being late, and you know how Omar is when you’re always late.”

AJ’s eyes widen with realization. “Shittles. I need to go. Bye Clem!” 

He runs out of the room, his hurried steps echoing past the corridor. Clementine wonders if he’s been spending way too much time with Violet to have picked up on a variety of diminutive swear words, but she supposes that it was inevitable considering the circumstances. 

Clementine positions her crutches and pulls herself up. She maneuvers around the traffic of blurry-faced ghosts, all turning to watch her leave as she walks past them, piercing her concrete heart with imploring eyes that begged for manumission from the world.

-

From the steps of the dilapidated school, the sun was in the pinnacle of the sky burning brighter, hotter - heavier as it weighed down on her back, and Clementine watches as life goes on.

There’s a warmth in her chest as she watches the glory of her home unfurl into its deserving peace and comfort. Willy was keeping lookout with his binoculars, standing tall with shoulders squared to emulate the ghost lingering beside him, watching over like a brother. Omar was preparing food with Ruby and Aasim, keeping a cordial conversation between them; to the side, AJ was laughing at a joke Louis had signed and Violet was rolling her eyes so far back that they disappeared. 

Everyone was happy, painted with illusionary halos from the sun, but then the warmth disappears as though she was doused in ice-cold water and suddenly there’s barbed wire cutting down her chest to the rest of her body, cinching her lungs as it fills her mouth with hot scarlet. Fire shoots up her leg and Clementine reaches for it to get rid of the violent itch, but when all her hand grabs is the air, she’s no longer in the school. 

She’s brought back to the odor of wet copper, of guts and blood and grief smeared all over her face and clothes, merging with the dead in an attempt to escape - the strong hand that was no longer warm but so, so cold and weak, cradling the side of her face with a whisper barely audible. A bloody stump and a bloody face to match; she remembers the smooth steel surface of the gun in her shaking hands before she aimed the bullet right at his head. Then, she dropped to her knees and hugged his lifeless body with a sob that wracked her whole body. 

Something’s wrong. The fight is over. Clementine can rest now. She needs to let go, to move forward, but when she’s no longer fighting and running and escaping, met with only her noisy thoughts, it rips her up from the inside out and finds it hard to breathe when everyone else who had been important to her had stopped breathing too. 

“Clem?”

Clementine jolts back into reality and she looks up to find Violet standing in front of her, blocking the sun. There’s a look of concern on her face and Clementine wants to wipe those worried lines away and replace them with the lines of a smile. 

“You okay?” Violet asks. She sits down beside Clementine. “I’m not, you know, trying to be overly worried ‘cause I know you can fuck a bunch of walkers up with or without a limb, but it looked like you were in pain. Is your leg hurting again?”

Clementine rubs her knee before she faintly touches the bandaged stump. “No. It’s - not my leg. I was just - thinking. Yeah, just thinking. Wish I could help with everything else.” 

Violet looks unconvinced, but goes along with it anyways. “It’s fine, Clem. You’ve helped us enough already - way more than we can fucking express, so the least you can do is count on us.” 

“I guess I can.” Clementine nudges Violet in the side. “You’re in charge, after all.”

“Mm, well. I’m just doin’ what my boss tells me.” Violet shrugs, a smile surfacing on her lips. “Don’t tell my girlfriend this, but I think my boss is super pretty and a damn badass.”

Clementine laughs. “You’re so lame.” 

“Not as lame as Louis.” 

Clementine shrugs in mutual agreement. Her smile dims a bit, however, when she catches Louis looking at them. When they meet eyes, Louis gives Clementine a bright smile before he redirects his attention back to AJ, playing catch with him. Clementine pinches her lips and feels the stone cold anvil of guilt drag her down. She remembers that ghosts didn’t have to be from the dead. 

“Clem? You sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine. I’m just - tired, that’s all.” Clementine shakes her head, assuring her with a smile that falls short. “I think I’m just going to head up and rest for a bit.”

Violet bites her lip, picking at the skin around her nails. She hesitates for a moment, but seems to think twice and settles with an, “Alright. I’ll find you when dinner’s ready, then.” 

Clementine nods. She leans forward and pecks Violet on the lips, and laughs when she sees Violet’s bug-eyed reaction at the unexpected gesture. Clementine pulls herself up from the steps with her crutches, says her goodbyes, and heads into the school.

-

It repeats over the next few days.

The ghosts were like a mixture of water and oil, molded into humanly shapes that haunted the empty spaces around her. Clementine can’t seem to keep her eyes closed because when she sleeps, she dreams, and she can never sleep again. But she makes sure AJ is okay before anything else; then, she stays up in her room alone, using her leg as an excuse. And if she wonders why the confrontation with the caravan is suddenly postponed, Clementine doesn’t ask about it. She feels like she’d know the answer as to why. 

When the night reigns over the sky, Clementine shuts her eyes and thinks about _Lee, Lee, Lee_ in hopes of seeing him again. But she dreams about the ghosts instead. 

_“You say that like it's so easy. Not everyone can be like you.”_

Clementine gasps and opens her eyes. Sarah stands there, skin hanging from her bloody face opened up raw, bubbling and dripping down the rest of her torn body. But she’s got a smile on her face, the kind of smile that still retained a childish hope and optimism in the wake of the world’s downfall - the kind of smile she gave Clementine whenever they crossed paths because she was too nice and vulnerable to be cautious. 

“I’ve always wanted to be a librarian when I grew up. I loved books and wanted to teach children how to love reading too,” Sarah says, stepping forward. She takes Clementine’s hands into hers, all mangled and scarred, and brings it close to her clawed chest. “But you probably think it’s really dumb.”

“Sarah, no - “

“A pinky swear is forever, Clementine. But you broke our promise.” Sarah giggles. “But I knew it was always one-sided. You left me to die after all, didn’t you?”

Something constricts in Clementine’s chest. Sarah lets go of her hands and recedes into the darkness, filling the void with blood curdling screams and cries for her father and Clementine covers her ears to make it _stop_. The noise drapes over her and she’s suddenly pulled down into a breadth of freezing water, pillars of silver light wading through. 

Clementine can’t breathe; she’s drowning and drowning and she’s ready to die, but then she’s suddenly back onto the icy surface, watching Luke be pulled down to his unwarranted death and relinquish to the water’s bottomless depths.

Bonnie cries, cries, and cries - her grief permeating the skies with a banshee-like wail. “You could have saved him.”

Clementine wished she knew how to be invincible to save _everyone_. 

A shot to her shoulder almost kills her. She watches Kenny plunge the knife into Jane’s chest, and his face becomes twisted and warped and unrecognizable. Kenny’s too broken, too harrowed by his own pain and loss, but Clementine hangs onto him anyways because he was the only other person she knew who kept the memory of Lee alive too. And there was still hope to Kenny that he could finally patch himself back up because there was still kindness in his hardened heart, but then he dies. Kenny dies because of her and Clementine can no longer understand why the world desperately wants _her_ to be alive more than anyone else. Everywhere she goes, she brings misfortune. 

She’s branded by The New Frontier and in Prescott, Clementine kills a man in cold blood. She kills without feeling, without thinking, but when Javier hugs her and Gabe holds her hand, she remembers that Lee didn’t teach her to shoot so she could senselessly kill. He taught her so she could protect, and so she does. 

But she couldn’t protect everyone. Brody dies and dies again, blood pouring forth from the gash on her forehead because Clementine couldn’t save her from Marlon quick enough, and she couldn’t help Marlon either, with his mind too ruined to convey any stability that enticed AJ to shoot him. Mitch fought for the school - for his family - alongside Clementine despite his bitterness held against her, and it’s all because of Clementine that Louis can never sing again. She watches his tongue fall to the floor over and over, blood spilling from his mouth and onto the earth with undeserving silence. 

And Clementine wishes that _she_ was the one who died, who got her tongue cut off, who was dragged down into the ocean below and that the bullet to her shoulder could have ended it all. Why is _she_ alive when she couldn’t save the souls who deserved to live? Why is _she_ alive when Lee isn’t?

 _Lee._ Lee is still there, in her head, and Clementine wants to see him again but all she sees are the mangled, disfigured bodies of her past friends and enemies, of Christa’s disillusioned ghost lost to the woods, of Omid lying in his own pool of blood in the girl’s bathroom, of AJ flinching away from Clementine in the ranch, her deplorable and crooked hands steeped in merciless blood, blood, blood, _blood_ \- 

“Oh, sweet pea,” she hears Lee’s voice in the darkness. “Why do you do this to yourself?”

Clementine opens her eyes. She’s drenched in sweat and a fit of tremors. Her breaths comes out ragged and she struggles to regain the regularity of it, but when she does, Clementine turns her head to the window. The moon’s out. A bowl of stew is sitting on the table with a thin filigree of steam still rising from its contents. And across from her on AJ’s bed, was Violet.

Violet has her arms crossed and back hunched - a defensive stance that hasn’t budged since the beginning of the time Clementine met her. But her face that had once been hardened almost permanently with cynicism and doubt has softened into concern. “You were having a nightmare.”

Clementine continues to lie there with heavy shoulders and a heavier heart. She croaks, “AJ?”

“I told him to sleep in my room for the night. It was damn hard to wheedle him into agreeing with me. He - he’s really protective of you, but I’m sure you already know that.” Violet stands up from the bed, though she doesn’t move. “Clem, you’re not okay. I mean, at this point, nobody is actually fucking okay, but you - _you_ look like you’re on the edge of falling apart. And that’s really scary.”

Mustering all the strength she has, Clementine finally sits up. A wave of nausea seizes her for a quick moment, but she swallows it back down like she does with everything else. “It’ll go away. Don’t worry.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard you say,” Violet retorts. “Nothing goes away. You just learn how to manage all that shit, but it _never_ goes away.”

Clementine sees the way Violet’s lips are pulled into a taut line, her forehead creased and shoulders tensed. Clementine looks down at her hands resting on her lap, dirt and dried blood stuck beneath her fingernails surrounded by flayed skin. Her phantom leg is starting to itch again. 

After a moment of silence, Clementine hears a series of quiet footsteps approach her. Violet crosses the room and takes a seat beside Clementine on the bed, leaving space between them, but rests her hand there as an open invitation to whenever Clementine can handle the touch of others. That gesture alone melts the slabs of concrete encasing her heart, and Clementine lets the first layer crumble down. With a deep breath, Clementine allows herself to slouch in exhaustion. 

“It doesn’t feel like home,” she whispers. “Not yet.” 

Violet bites down on her lip, but the lines etched on her forehead smooths down into that of understanding. “I get that. It feels - wrong, sometimes, to feel happy when Brody isn’t here. She should have been here to see it - to see _this_.” 

“Do… you still blame her?”

“I don’t know. I used to. I - she was my friend, Clem. I was angry and confused and hurt, but it wasn’t all her fault. It was Marlon’s too. He _knew_ that Brody had anxiety and that it was easy for her to comply because she couldn’t handle confrontations, and he _used_ that against her.” Violet sucks in a deep breath. “And he just - he killed her. He killed her and she died in that basement thinking I hated her all this time.” 

Clementine inches her hand forward and interlocks their pinkies. “It’s not your fault.”

“I want to believe that,” Violet murmurs, donning a look of aged regret. “I wish I could believe that.” 

Clementine folds her lips. The murky moonlight spills through the windowpanes and scatters across the floor, pinning into a spotlight for every ghost in their watered down outlines like a play on shadow, an illusion of light, to bask in momentary sweet relief. The tendril of warmth from their connected pinkies sends a spark of courage through Clementine to let her guard down and be vulnerable. 

“Lee killed a man,” she begins. “He was supposed to go to jail. But then the walkers appeared and it didn’t matter who you were or what you did before, anymore. All that mattered was survival. There were people who still saw him as a bad man, but to me, Lee was - “ her voice lowers to a whisper, “my light.”

Clementine takes in a shaky breath when Violet doesn’t say anything. “He taught me how to survive, how to fight, how to trust my gut and be brave. He taught me to never be afraid and to stay away from cities and to keep my hair short. He taught me how to let go.” She huffs a single, wry laugh. “But I don’t think I’m doing a very good job at that, right now.”

“He’d be proud of you,” Violet speaks up quietly. “He totally would. I barely know half the shit you went through, but you survived, Clem. No matter what you did, you deserve to be here.” 

Clementine smiles a bit sadly. “I wish I could believe that too.”

Violet purses her lips. Clementine looks down at their pinkies before she finally intertwines their hands, heat blooming between their palms. Violet smiles with a delicate shape to her lips, but then she looks down and asks, “Do you miss him?”

“I do,” Clementine says. It’s a simple, straightforward answer. But then something prickles her eyes and discomfort settles in her nose. There’s a knot forming in her throat and she doesn’t know why her chest hurts. Everything blurs. “I - yeah, I do. I really do.”

“Clem?”

And she can’t stop. “You know what fucking sucks the most? He got bit. He got - he cut his _arm_ off. It should have saved him the way it saved me, but why didn’t it? Why am I still here, alive, if it didn’t work for _him_? He died because he was trying to save me, so I killed him in a way, didn’t I? I killed him. I couldn’t save him. I wanted to save him but all I could do was put a fucking bullet in his head and I - “ 

Her voice is small, cracking, “It doesn’t feel like home because _he_ isn’t here with me.”

Violet hesitates at first, but she gathers Clementine’s shaking form into her arms and holds her tight. Clementine hears her own sounds, raw from the inside. It takes something out of her she didn't know she had left to give and it punches through all the layers of self-preservation, ripping through her muscles, bones, and guts. Her heart yanks in and out of her chest and pulls back in like a yo-yo. Over and over. In and out. 

They sit in silence, save for the bouts of sniffling. Violet doesn’t let go, resting her cheek on top of Clementine’s head, and Clementine can hear the unsteady rhythm of her heartbeat. The filaments of the misty moonlight wraps around the ghosts like a feathery dance, enveloping them into a fleeting state of concreteness, before slowly, the light gradually dims. They collect in masses in the corner of the room as though they were waiting for something to take them away. 

Clementine doesn’t know how long they sit there. Her face has dried and she’s breathing normally now, and when she uses her sleeve to wipe the snot dripping from her nose, Violet jerks. Uncertainty lingers in her movements. “I - fuck, sorry. I’m not - I don’t know what to say. Or do. I’m not really good at this kinda stuff like Louis.”

“It’s okay,” Clementine murmurs, “You’re doing a great job.”

“Was that sarcasm?”

Clementine cracks a smile despite the twinge in her chest. Violet rubs gentle circles on her back, floundering for a moment, before she says, “Let’s lie down.”

And so they do. Violet has her arms wrapped around Clementine’s waist as she’s tucked underneath Violet’s chin. Clementine has never been held like this before, but it’s comfortable. It’s peaceful. It’s warm. It’s safe. 

“He saved you - protected you for a reason, Clem,” Violet says, her voice wobbly. She’s trying to be brave. “He fought to keep you alive. I‘m sure he wouldn’t want you to grieve over something you couldn’t control. I mean - wow, says _me_ , right? And God, this is gonna sound like every obituary out there, but - he’ll always be with you no matter what, so you have to trust him.”

Clementine knows. But it doesn’t matter if Lee was still living on in her blurry memories or in her heart. An unseen Lee couldn’t watch her grow or teach her random history facts whenever she misses the concept of school, or hug her with his fatherly warmth that made her feel secure among the wasteland of an earth. Lee couldn’t do anything with her if he’s just stuck inside her head and in her heart. 

But it’s true, nonetheless. He’s always there: a lingering, blurry-faced ghost, that wasn’t one of the many ghosts begging for mercy, for forgiveness, or wanting revenge and blood to be spilled from her skin. Lee was there among the few who watched over her in his spirit - a clumsy, rustic guardian angel that fought Death itself to keep Clementine here. And the pain never fades and the regret never goes, but Clementine will always love the man who took care of her and protected her. And she’ll always do the same to AJ, to the girl she loves, to the friends she cherishes - too. 

“Yeah,” Clementine murmurs, placing a hand over Violet’s. She watches a ghost exclude itself from the others in the corner, facing her with a stalwart poise. “He’s always here.” 

And they talk. They talk so long because the both of them wouldn’t be able to sleep. Clementine talks about the people she’s met - about Rebecca and Alvin, Sarah and Carlos, Luke and Nick. She talks about Kenny, Duck and Katjaa, Javier and Gabe, and the dog that mauled her so hard she had to sew her own injury up when she was locked inside a shed. She mentions the countless scars, the brand on her arm, the things she’s seen. 

And in return, Violet talks about the life she had before the apocalypse began. Her lost cause of a father, cold and disillusioned mother, and her grandmother who was so consumed by grief she’d aimed a bullet through her mouth - a typical, cyclical upbringing of a troubled and traumatized teen, she says wryly. But she mentions the tenderness of her grandmother’s nurture - that she took care of Violet when her parents were too busy fucking up to give a damn about their kid. 

When Violet talks about Minerva, there is sadness and wistfulness but acceptance. She talks about Minerva like an old friend, like a watercolour memory that was laid to rest alongside her little brother and twin sister, and Clementine wonders how things would be if the world was still okay - if they still would have crossed paths despite being dreams and lengths of happiness apart. 

“Grief is a process, not an event,” Violet murmurs, and it is the way she sounds that makes Clementine think she’s speaking from experience. “So it’s okay if you’re not okay. It’s okay if you’ll never be okay. No one is. But you’ll learn how to handle it, and to live with it, and to grow from it - even if things seem completely hopeless at first.”

At one point, Violet’s soft voice begins to lull Clementine into a drowsy stupor. But before she lets her eyes close, Clementine glances up and notices the blurry-faced ghosts gather together in the corner of the room - fading, fading, fading.

-

When Clementine wakes up with Violet’s arms still around her, she takes in the full-face sight of AJ peering at them with wide, curious eyes, and Clementine almost yells.

“Jesus, AJ,” Clementine mutters, goosebumps raised along her arms. “You scared the hell out of me.”

“Are you okay? Do you need anything? Did something happen?” AJ asks loudly. “Was it your leg?”

Clementine smiles. She reaches forward and pinches his cheek, making him scrunch up his nose. “I’m better now, goofball. Sorry to make you worry. But - I’m fine, really.” 

Violet stirs behind her with a groan. She lets go of Clementine and props herself up with an elbow, squinting with sleepy crusts in her eyes. “Goddamnit, AJ. You’re such an early bird that it annoys the hell outta me sometimes.”

AJ darts his eyes between them. “What were you guys doing?”

“Uh. Sleeping?” Clementine answers, confused. 

“But, like. You were hugging each other in your sleep. Do people sleep like that?”

Violet clears her throat and sits up properly. “It was just - like, a form of it, you know? Spooning or some shit.”

“Spooning? Like, for soup?”

Violet’s face turns slightly red and she rolls out of bed, clumsily squashing Clementine in the process. “I’ll tell you later, AJ. Aren’t you supposed to be at shack right now?”

“I wanted to check on Clem.” AJ frowns. “And why am I always on fish duty? It’s boring.”

Violet shrugs and eases him out the door. He says farewell to Clem and exclaims that he’ll come back to play with her later. Violet turns around and faces Clementine, sheepishly rubbing the back of her neck and looking uncertain on whether or not to say something. But when she does, she gives Clementine a shy smile. “Guess I’ll head out, now.” 

She pauses, seemingly churning around the words in her head, and her voice softens. “And hey. This might be a really fucked up thing to say, but - I’m thankful for Lee, because I got to meet you.” 

Violet doesn’t give Clementine a chance to reply. She leaves the room and shuts the door quietly behind her, and Clementine stares at where Violet once stood. Her chest is warm.

And when Clementine immerses herself in the room’s solitude, she realizes that the ghosts’ blurry figures are merging with the skylight of dawn, blending in with the shadows of dusk. They dwindled, hid, and came back to ebb. Clementine doesn’t see them as vividly as before; they no longer crowd the spaces around her and suffocate her with intangible, elongated hands that belonged to mutilated monsters. They float like shapeless, wispy clouds, and her heart feels light.

They’re letting go of her too. 

Clementine remembers about the stew left overnight and feels bad at the thought of wasting it, so she picks the bowl up and slowly eats. It’s cold and dull now, but Omar has always found a way to make the mundane taste good even in its worst conditions.

After she’s done, she grabs her crutches and heads out of the room. She makes her way down the long stairs of the school, and as she pushes the doors open and steps outside - greeted by the soft sunlight among the infinite pewter blue - she watches the way life goes on.

Willy was poking fun at AJ’s height before he gets kicked in the shin, making him hop around in pain, and AJ laughs at his temporary misery. Ruby was reprimanding Omar as she patches up a burn on his hand he’d garnered from setting up the fire, and Aasim was sitting at the desk with his journal open, recording the daily mishaps and blueprints of their survivals. 

And to the side, Louis and Violet were idling near the practice site for archery; he rips off a piece of paper from his notepad and hands it to her with an unwavering grin, looking impeccably smug. Violet’s face flushes a hot red and tries to beat his ass - a comical scene that Clementine would surely pay to watch everyday.

Clementine drinks in the sight and closes her eyes. A breeze brushes past her, and she imagines it to be Lee’s hand gently cradling the side of her face one last time.

The fight for their home was over and the fight inside her head is forever, but with this makeshift and patchwork family by her side - Clementine supposes that she will always come out as the victor.


End file.
